Letters to the editor

In wiser times, cigarettes were considered poison: protect the kids, reduce health-care expense, ban that toxin almost everywhere. As a result, we all breathe easier.

Now it’s 2017 — set up shops and fill them with pretty coloured weed balls, like lollipops. Who cares how many more toxins are in those?

Huge numbers of young people in their 20s are still in school and still dependent on their parents.

Is the medical community thrilled to welcome a new mind-altering drug we can all enjoy? Is there enough paper to list all the side-effects?

What about colleges and universities? All those 17- and 18-year-olds, away from home for the first time, alcohol in front of them everywhere, but no pressure eh? Just get some lollipops on the weekend to unwind.

Law enforcement. Why didn’t somebody think to ask them for an opinion? Are they fine picking up the pieces of the little family after a stoner drifted into the passing lane?

Check in with family services. They’re the ones who are called to get the crying baby when the parents are blissed out. Are they excited about adding a new government-approved way to mess up the kids?

Employers are asking if they will need urinals and a lab at every workplace.

There’s an opioid crisis in this country, an epidemic even. No irony there.

Making it legal means it’s OK to use. And the most likely to screw up their lives will be our teenagers. Premiers and MPs should be ashamed. You spend our money to tell our kids to eat healthy and exercise. And now you offer them marijuana brownies.

This is not the Canadian way. We deserve better.

Rita Dillon

St. Catharines

Proud to wear Karahalios badge of rejection

I thought the Catholic Church had done away with inquisitions. They are alive and well within the Ontario Progressive Party or so their crowing convention in Toronto on Saturday proved.

Longtime PC activist Jim Karahalios, head of the grassroots Axe the Carbon Tax group, was banned from attending the convention by organizers, according to media coverage. His membership was revoked at the door.

Liberal and NDP representatives, as well as members of the media were allowed in. But Jim K? He was shown the door. Tossed out of the convention.

I believe the Karahalios badge of rejection is a proud badge to wear. I would like to tell PC Leader Patrick Brown and organizers of the provincial Conservative party what I think about this move, but I made a promise to myself that I will never stand in line for anything again. This is how we stifle different viewpoints. So much for freedom of speech within the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.

And so with his image do-over, a hairdo suggested by his family (but not a Justin), Brown stepped up to his mirror and asked, “Who is the fairest in the land of Ontario?” The mirror could only laugh and it broke.